How It Ends
by Beguile
Summary: It's just so anti-climactic, especially given all of Hannibal's careful planning, that the game should end with Will shooting him in a PCP-induced frenzy.
1. How It Ends

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: It's just so anti-climactic, especially given all of Hannibal's careful planning, that the game should end with Will shooting him in a PCP-induced frenzy.

Author's Notes: I am no expert on either PCP or hallucinogens, so kindly forgive any glaring medical inaccuracies in this text.

* * *

How it Ends

Hannibal Lecter has given very serious thought to how this game will end.

Whimper, not bang, he's concluded. Good Will eventually finds himself staring at the world through Hannibal's cannibal eyes one day, and the doctor has no other choice than to cut the still-beating heart from the young man's chest.

_This is my design_.

He is open to variations of course. Like Will, Hannibal possesses imagination, and in some of his fantasies, Good Will likes what he sees through blood-coloured glasses. He murders his way through an FBI task force and cuts Jack Crawford to pieces. Hannibal isn't foolish enough to hope for this outcome, but still, he's only human, and the desire to trade Good Will for Bad is strong enough to fuel even the most ludicrous of fantasies.

Still, Hannibal's fairly confident that neither he nor Will has fantasized about this particular ending. It's just so anti-climactic, especially given all of Hannibal's careful planning, that the game should end with Will shooting him in a PCP-induced frenzy.

He's not sure what part of the situation disappoints him the most. There are a lot of factors vying for the top position: John Abelman, their newest serial killer, who got the brilliant idea to administer PCP to a man with unlimited imagination; whose brilliant idea is now costing Hannibal the one man in a million who might actually be his equal. Will's brain is taxed enough already by Crawford's prodding. It wouldn't take much PCP to push him over the edge.

The gun Will has trained on him unnerves Hannibal too. Guns are so impersonal, and what exists between them even now is very, very personal. Their final course should be served up with knives or rope or gloved fingers, not a firearm.

There's also the little matter of this whole showdown being nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.

Hannibal concedes. That is what angers him the most. He's spent so much time cultivating his relationship with Will and waiting for the man's remarkable brain to open itself up to him, that to have Will kill him because of a paranoid delusion is the worst of all possible losses. Hannibal can cope with losing based on his own merit. He could even cope with losing to Will someday, perhaps. But Hannibal refuses to lose because of someone else's stupidity, and he most certainly refuses to have his plans undone because of an idiot like John Abelman.

Abelman can wait though. For now, Hannibal relaxes his stance, keeps his hands in plain view, and fixes a hard stare on Will's eyes. "Who am I, Will?" he asks. "Stammitz? Hobbs? Some Ghost from a Case File Past?"

The question unsettles an already unsettled Will, because apparently he's not even sure what he's looking at right now. He only knows that it terrifies him. He stinks of fear: reeks of it, in fact. Fear is etched into every one of his features, from the twisted, near-tearful expression on his face to the ragged sounds of his all-too-rapid breathing. Will's twitches and tics have activated their own fight or flight response too, and it's positively dizzying to watch him try to hold a stance. The drug has rewritten him into the fragile little teacup that Jack Crawford sees, and Hannibal feels a twinge of regret that Good Will's about to break. All his hard work will have been for nothing.

"No," Will's bottom lip quivers, "No, you're just you, Dr. Lecter."

"And what is it you see that compels you to point a gun at me?"

"You're the snake slithering by."

Hannibal half-smiles. PCP annoys him. It doesn't reveal anything about the psyche, just causes the imagination to flail without impulse control, which psychologically isn't too different from how Will seems to operate normally. Except that Will's imagination doesn't flail, and he wouldn't normally try to shoot any of his projections outside of a shooting range. Where did Will's deductions end and the drug-induced paranoia begin? Hannibal had to be sure.

"I wonder what it was that gave me away," Hannibal says calmly.

Will's head twitches towards the empty miles of forest surrounding them. "They tell me things."

"Voices in the trees," Hannibal nods. All is not lost then. There might still be a chance to salvage Good Will's mind. Better still, Hannibal tries not to smile more wickedly at the thought, Will's bad trip might inspire greater confidence between them. Fear and guilt are great motivators. "That kind of evidence isn't admissible in court."

"It's more than just...voices. I see you. I _see_ you, Dr. Lecter! I see the way you hide behind propriety, the way you deflect..." Will loses his train of thought to more sounds Hannibal can't hear and images he can't see. The younger man is really crumbling now. "The way you deflect any of my observations with more of your own! You're disarming me! You want me...dependent! On you!"

Hannibal sighs. These conclusions are always more satisfying from the sober. "You know John Abelman likes to drug his victims."

Will starts shaking his head, lips pursed, and looks more and more like a child having a tantrum, but he still hasn't fired. That fact alone keeps Hannibal talking. "A small dose of PCP. Just enough to scare them."

"He didn't do that to me."

"He was hiding at the scene, Will."

"No! No, I see you!"

"He attacked and drugged you."

Will waves the gun at Hannibal. "I'm _not_ insane."

"I know," Hannibal keeps his tone as formal as possible, not wanting to patronize the rattled young agent. "You're not insane. But you're not well, Will. It's quite chilly outside today, but you're perspiring. One of the effects of PCP is an increase in body temperature. You're also, if I'm not mistaken, experiencing an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration."

Will's only response is to shake harder, all the way from the bones out. His body seems to recognize the wrongness of its current condition, even if his brain is universes elsewhere. "Stop analyzing me. I don't need to be analyzed."

But his resolve is starting to crumble, and despite all the rage he's holding back, Will _still hasn't fired_. Curious, Hannibal considers, and hazards the smallest of steps towards the younger man, testing his boundaries by degrees, as always. Will merely takes a step back. Even in his current state, he can't bring himself to take a life.

The thought warms Hannibal. Irritated as he is – with Abelman, not Will – he is aware, at last, that this isn't the end. This is merely foreshadowing. Young Agent Graham will play the lion and end up the lamb. Hannibal might even serve him with mint sauce.

He's not content to win so easily though. Hannibal can forgive Will his rudeness because of Abelman's intervention, but he's always looking for ways to hurt the young agent. And _this_ will hurt Will, Hannibal knows, first because he held a gun on his friend and then, later, because he didn't take the opportunity to fire when he had the chance.

Hannibal therefore opts against wresting the gun from Will's hands by force. Will has to give him the gun out of his own free will. That was the only way to pain.

"See yourself through my eyes, Will," Hannibal prompts, "A young man lost, confused. Throwing punches at superior officers and pointing guns at friends to satisfy paranoid fantasies."

Will's face crumples. He stops searching Hannibal's periphery for phantoms and steadies his gaze on the doctor's chest. Hannibal shifts closer, inspecting Will's eyes. They look aware: ashamed but aware. That impossible imagination of his has responded to Hannibal's suggestions and entered into a bizarre feedback loop, where empathizing with the good doctor finally allows him to empathize with himself.

"There's nothing to fear, Will."

"I should fear you."

Hannibal hopes that's not the PCP talking. "Do you?"

Will's bad shoulder drops, easing the gun down several inches until it's hovering somewhere around Hannibal's midriff. He makes several attempts to correct his stance, but he physically can't. "I don't know," his chest caves. "I just don't know."

Hannibal nods in understanding. "It will come to you, Will. When all this is over, it will come to you. And when it does, I'll be there."

The gun falls another few inches. Will deflates, "I lost him. I was so close, and I lost him."

Hannibal holds out his hand. "Give me the gun, Will."

The younger man hesitates and fights tears. Hannibal doesn't back down. He so wants this moment. He _needs_ it. If Will is to be broken, and this experience already has broken him terribly, than he can at least be broken in a way that suits Hannibal's agenda.

Will takes the gun by the barrel.

"You want me hopeless," he says sadly.

Hannibal sighs. "Give me the gun, Will."

Will does.

The good doctor smiles.

_This is my design_.

* * *

I don't think this work is quite finished just yet; hopefully, I'll figure out where these plot bunnies are leading me soon. Either way, thanks for reading!


	2. Interlude

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: They're putting him in the ground; Will's certain of it.

Author's Notes: My knowledge of medicine is limited, but my research suggested that EMTs don't actually administer anti-anxiety medication in the field (or at least rarely do). I don't really put anything past the good doctor though; hence, the ending of this chapter. Hopefully, it doesn't strain your willful suspensions of disbelief too much.

More drabble-y than anything else, but I know there's at least another scene after this I have to write.

* * *

Interlude

They're putting him in the ground; Will's certain of it. He can feel the damp earth against his back, cradling his head; there are faces above him, disfigured no matter how much he squints, each one looking through him. He's not a person anymore: he's mulch. He's mushroom fodder. They're strapping an IV to his arm, a tube down his throat, burying him in a shallow grave, and keeping him alive long enough for the mushrooms to take hold.

"Get off me," he fights, but his limbs aren't working properly. His arms are backwards and his legs are wrong. All the nerves and tendons have been back-flipped and flip-flopped in such a way that when he wants to take a swing, he jerks in the opposite direction. His blurry vision isn't helping matters. Will can't hit what appears diffusely in several places at once.

Voices overlap one another. "...trying to help you, Mr. Graham," latex gloved fingers grab hold of his shoulders and keep him steady. "...need you...down...just calm..."

"I won't go down there," he tells them, still fighting. His fingers find the IV butterfly but someone restrains him just before he tears it out. "NO! No, I can't...I won't, I can't...let go of me. Let go of me." He manages to roll to his side before they can inject any fluids, but all he can do is squirm in the dirt as the phantom hands attack from all sides.

The stag stands proudly in the trees before him. Will reaches, shouts maybe, but he's quickly pulled back and rolled from the dirt to a plush surface. The sky opens up and swallows him, then spits him back out when his hands, feet, and chest are pinned down with heavy straps. Cold fluid is draining into his arm, and Will's tastes sugar, salt, and shiitakes in the back of his throat. A plastic mask is pressed firmly against his face, covering his mouth and nose and feeding him – and the mushrooms – fresh oxygen.

Will tosses his head, a last-ditch effort to free himself. "No more connections," he begs. "Please, no more connections." He's already made all the connections he could ever want. He's wrapped himself around Hobbs and Stammitz and the Ripper, and now they want him to be a part of everything. They want him eaten up from the inside until he's just an empty, rotting shell of a human being, then fill him back up with everything else.

The chill of saline clarifies the sensations of growth prickling about inside his thoracic cavity. Will gasps for breath in horror. He can already feel the fibres creeping around his organs: they're choking his liver, infiltrating his stomach, weaving around his lungs and heart. Mushrooms spores are dancing through his bloodstream and flooding his cells. He can feel the button tops balloon against his bones. Every breath bounces against a newly grown field inside him, just waiting to escape. And he'll be conscious when they do. They want him to feel. They want him to know. They want him to _see_.

_"Will_."

A hand grips his. Will tries to focus on it, but the pressure in his chest is overwhelming. Even with the oxygen pounding against his mouth and nose, he can't take a breath anymore. Christ, he's dying. "Get them out," he begs raggedly. "Get them out of me! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"

"You can breathe just fine, Will," the grip tightens. "You...giv...a drug. What you're experiencing...just a hallucination."

It doesn't look or feel like a hallucination though. "Please," tears are coming. He chokes and spasms. "I don't want to go into the ground."

"You won't be going into the ground," the voice, heavily accented, grows quieter. Will has to stop gasping in order to hear it, but the message isn't for him. He catches one-word-in-twenty: something something respiratory distress. Ativan? Diazepam? Will doesn't have a chance to really contemplate before he's lifted off the ground. The whole world lurches on its axis, and he has to close his eyes against the whirling, twirling forest-sky-people all around him.

"Breathe slowly and deeply, Will."

But the words don't work, because words don't make the mushrooms go away. The first one bursts through his stomach, the next from his clavicle, and then the rest simply bloom from his chest in small puffs of blood and skin. The earth is cool against his ankles. Its pull is soothing, and Will feels himself slipping away and into everything else. Because that's what mushrooms do: they make connections. Will was already a mushroom, he just didn't know it yet, and now he's in the earth with Hobbs, the two of them rotting together, as it should be.

The skin around the IV port burns. "Will. Will? WILL." The voice is getting rather insistent, but it takes Will's head a lifetime to rejoin his body from under the earth. And even when he does return to his senses, his senses don't really return to him. The world's gone hazy; his involvement in it is half-hearted and prevented. There's a fog settling thickly in his skull that makes his thoughts whirlpool down into some lost, dark region where Hobbs is waiting for him. Hannibal's face looms above his, and the good doctor's hands are on his cheeks, holding him steady and above ground and in the moment.

"Breathe slowly," the good doctor commands. Will chokes for a long moment, terrified of what comes next. He can't express what Lecter should know. There's no room in his chest for air, not next to the garden of fresh mushrooms. Hannibal catches him mid-thrash though and forces their eyes to meet. "There is _nothing _here that will harm you, Will. You need to breathe. Slowly now."

Will's eyelids are getting heavy. His heart rate is decreasing. "I'm dying...I'm dying..." he sucks in what he expects to one last gulp of oxygen, but then the band on his chest loosens. Air spills into him, cool and clean, once-twice-three times deeply, and then he has to follow his pulse: slow, steady, constant.

Hannibal catches Will's head as it lolls, easing him into the pillow as his eyelids flutter shut.

"Sleep, Will...just sleep..."

* * *

Happy reading!


	3. How It Ends: Reprise

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: The pieces of Will are starting to pile up, and the good doctor looks forward to counting and cataloguing every one of them in therapy.

Author's Notes: I think that covers it. Thank you for reading!

* * *

How It Ends: Reprise

Hannibal wishes he could be around waking-Will more often. There's a look that crosses his face as he rouses, one of such monumental confusion, that the good doctor's convinced Will's never certain of who he is when he wakes or if he's actually waking up at all. Today there's the added disorientation that comes with anti-psychotics and benzodiazepines, restraints and lethargy and pain, that makes Will come to by uncoordinated degrees. He struggles to see before his eyelids can open, tries to speak before his mouth can form words, and tugs at his wrists before he's really strong enough to fight the restraints.

The discovery of the restraints changes Will's expression rapidly. There's just so many layers of terror in his face: terror that this is a dream he can't distinguish from reality, terror that this _is _reality, terror that this imprisonment won't ever end. Hannibal is torn between settling Good Will's nerves and watching him panic for a little while longer. Somewhere in between the two lies the dependency he craves.

As with the forest though, Hannibal lets Will come to him.

The younger man's eyes, when they do finally open, fix on the ceiling and stay there. Disassociation, Hannibal identifies, not to mention the only recourse Will currently has against tears. He starts to hyperventilate again, but after several long moments, Will manages to get himself back under control. "Baltimore?" he asks humourlessly by way of greeting, "Or Washington?"

"Washington," Hannibal replies, "Georgetown University Hospital, actually."

Will's eyes close again, but his face remains tense. "Am I...awaiting transfer?"

"I felt your transfer to a psychiatric facility was premature given that your psychoses were drug induced. I anticipated you would have requested nothing less."

"Thank you," Will breathes, but he doesn't relax. "When can these come off?"

There's an undercurrent of panic simmering just below the surface of Will's voice despite the anti-anxiety medication they have him on, and Panicked Will is easy to play with, because he can't comprehend who's pulling on his strings. "My apologies, Will," Hannibal plays the party line, "You have been in quite a state. A danger to yourself and others."

"I can't..." he chokes on the word, because there's just so much he _can't_, "I'm...really tired. I couldn't lift my arms if I tried. And I would rather not be on my back right now."

Will has been on his back for a long while now, but Hannibal knows it's not just the strain causing Will to list. Lying prostrate, wrist slightly suspended to accommodate an IV, Will looks like one of Stammitz's mushroom beds. Hannibal wants to pry – Stammitz's madness was, in a sense, the clearest metaphorical response any killer could ever hope to achieve of Will's gift – but he doesn't want to push right now. Will's admission of helplessness is what he's been waiting to hear since arriving at the hospital.

"Are you experiencing any predilections towards aggression, Will?"

Hannibal anticipates sarcasm but receives the pitiful shake of Will's head in response instead. There's nothing left of the young profiler, not even a resonance of Hobbs or some other killer, except the sad admission of a sad fact: he's broken in a way that he can't fix, restrained in a ways the bed only begins to express. Hannibal doesn't want to let him go just yet, but to not do so seems like a greater gamble. He wants Will back in the game as soon as possible.

So he rises from the chair and starts undoing buckles on the restraints.

Will generally responds to physical contact the way most people respond to third degree burns, but he apparently wasn't lying when he admits that he didn't have the strength to do anything. Hannibal tests the boundaries, brushes his fingers deliberately over Will's coarse hands and ankles, and the profiler reacts with only hitched breath or subtle twitches. Once freed, he draws his hands to his waist, wincing, and folds his legs up the few inches his muscles will allow.

"Thank you," Will says quietly before attempting to shift onto his side. Navigating the numerous wires and tubes attached to his body results in some difficulty, but Will's determined and needs to feel independent again, so Hannibal stands by, waiting for an invitation he knows will probably never come.

"How long...am I here for?" Will asks, breath heaving, when he's finally settled in a clumsy approximation of the fetal position. His eyes closed, but his breathing remains so steady, so controlled, that Hannibal knows he hasn't fallen asleep.

The doctor settles back into his seat. "Anywhere from forty-eight to seventy-two hours to ensure that no lasting psychological damage has been incurred," Hannibal hopes, for his own sake, there is none. "You have already slept eighteen."

"I don't feel like I've slept at all."

"Normal, given what you experienced."

Will chuckles softly, mirthlessly. "I'm not even sure what I experienced."

Hannibal reveals nothing in his expression. He keeps the gun carefully concealed beneath his professional veneer. "What do you remember?"

The younger man's face twitches, an involuntary reaction to whatever he's reliving. He fixes a stare on the floor beside Hannibal. "I remember Abelman," Will's face sours at the name, "I remember the injection. I remember..." he makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and an objection. "I remember punching Jack...?"

"You sound uncertain."

"I feel...detached from it all. Like I'm just seeing the world through someone else's eyes."  
"Disassociation is a side-effect of PCP. As is aggression."

The words come easily for Hannibal. He made a similar observation to an enraged Jack Crawford just after Will disappeared from the scene, when the EMTs were checking out the bruise blossoming around the older agent's left eye. His explanations don't have any effect on Will though, no matter how true they might be. Will doesn't like being reminded about how little control he has, and PCP has shaken the already shaky foundations of his psyche.

Hannibal wonders what the memories of the gun will do. The pieces of Will are starting to pile up, and the good doctor looks forward to counting and cataloguing every one of them in therapy.

The young profiler's doesn't let him down. "I didn't punch anyone else, did I?"

"No. You dashed off into the forest in pursuit of something."

"Stag hunting," Will breathes.

"Of your own accord or that of Jacob Garrett Hobbs?"  
Will doesn't answer that, and not because he doesn't have an answer: only because a greater answer plagues him. The little colour in his face disappears. "I'm sorry, Doctor Lecter."

Hannibal tries not to smile. "For what, Will?"

"I seem to recall-" another laugh, this one sharper and bitterer than the first, "-holding a gun on you."

The revelation is satisfying for Hannibal. As damaged as Will most assuredly is, he's not damaged beyond repair. He doesn't need to be baited; his faculties seem to be more or less intact. If anything, Will's brokenness seems tailor-made for Hannibal's purposes: enough that he still needs the good doctor for a while longer, but not so broken that they can't be a match for one another.

Will's doe eyes rest somewhere around Hannibal's shoulder, wounded in a way they haven't been since that first conversation after Hobbs. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

Moments like these, Hannibal wants to show his true self: let even a glimmer of the monster out so he can watch Will's face fall. He keeps his desires sufficiently suppressed for now though. The only thing more satisfying that hurting Will now is hurting Will later, when he's rebuilt, reconstituted, when he has so much further to fall.

Hannibal's smile is small but genuine. "You have nothing to apologize for, Will. The voices in the trees are to blame."

"I feel like it was more than that..."

"More than auditory hallucinations and drug-induced paranoia?" Hannibal's eyes narrow infinitesimally, searching Will's profile for an explanation. Is it the years of practice written into his facade? Will's empathy? He has to know. If not the PCP, what was it that revealed him to be more monster than man? His mind reels through contingency plans, other possible endings, and decides that while Will's imprisonment in a psychiatric institution would not be a satisfying main course, it would suffice. He could have the young profiler all to himself, locked up mind and body, completely aware of Hannibal's true nature but unable to articulate it.

Will's eyes tic across the ceiling. "I remember everything felt so real, like the voices were the truth itself ringing out in my head. They were a conclusion that I'd drawn a long time ago but only just acted upon."

Hannibal sighs inwardly. Will's suspicions might exist at an unconscious level, but they are easily disguised as paranoid fantasies in this case. "I do not need to explain the effects of PCP to you, do I, Will?"

Will closes his eyes and shakes his head, "No. I know, Doctor. I'm just...I'm sorry that was the way the drug manifested. I couldn't help thinking those things."

"So long as you don't think them now."

"I don't," Will replies sternly, fixing his eyes on Hannibal's cheek – as close as he will get to making eye contact. "I just...I don't know how to make sense of what I felt then and what I feel now."

"What do you feel now?"  
"Shame. Embarrassment. Doubt."

"In yourself?"  
The word does not come quickly to Will. He has to struggle to wrap his lips around it, to support it over his vocal chords. "Yes."

Hannibal moves to checkmate. "Whatever impulse compelled you to punch your superior officer and draw a gun on friends was chemically induced," he states flatly. "There is no need to doubt who you are."

"Who I am..." Will laments. "Who is that, I wonder?"

"We are defined by our choices, Will: Abelman took those away from you. PCP forced you to point a gun at me. It was your own true nature that inspired you to turn the gun away."

And will inspire him to turn the gun away again, at the end of all things, Hannibal believes.

The answer settles upon Will uncomfortably. He wants to be in control of even his awful actions just so that he's _in control_, but there's no telling where he ends and the monsters begin anymore. Hannibal is offering the only silver lining left in a brutal situation. He's the anchor for Will's psyche, the light in the windows, and Will, true to form, always makes port. He relaxes into the pillow and takes Hannibal's analysis, because any other explanation justifies the restraints binding him to the bed.

Hannibal, satisfied, says, "You do not seem to be suffering any ill psychological effects from the injection."

"_From the injection_," Will repeats sardonically. "I have plenty of ill psychological effects from everything else."

"I look forward to getting to know them," Hannibal replies with a smile.

_This is my design._


End file.
